New Directions

The Sun Sets on the American Empire

You can see it in the controlled rage of John McCain during the debate with Barack Obama. You can hear it in the desperate rantings of Sarah Palin as she frantically appeals for the drunken support of Joe Six Pack and his redneck friends. You can sense it in the uncertain voice of George Bush as he tells a very small crowd of supporters that all will be well. Around the world the stock markets are crashing, governments are desperately trying to shore up their economies, and ordinary citizens sit bewildered, knowing that their life savings have suddenly evaporated as their banks collapse.

It is as America’s poet laureate, Bob Dylan, wrote, “The old order is rapidly fadin’.”

Through many years of Republican rule in the United States, tax laws were passed that always favored the wealthy and burdened the poor. The outrageous use of our military might was used to raid the wealth of other nations. U.S. multinational corporations exploited of billions of poor workers in foreign countries, even at the expense of our own people’s jobs. With a blind eye towards those who are suffering – even our own drowning citizens of New Orleans- George Bush and his cohorts implemented a cruel and distorted vision that attempted to take us back centuries in time and create a worldwide feudal empire. His was a vision where a small number of ultra-wealthy businessmen ruled everything, supported by an “undeserving” peasant class in America and abroad. It was only their extraordinary greed that brought them down as they believed in their own malignant lie that a worldwide “trickle-down” economy could be self sustaining.

This worldwide American Empire – really more of a financial empire than a physical empire of nations, was the ideological successor to the British Empire. Both fell for the same reason: excessive and unsustainable greed and an unfailing, but wildly errant, belief that there truly is a class of “elect” people in the world who are destined to rule the peasant masses.

George Bush made one of his famous idiotic gaffes , while he addressed Queen Elizabeth. He later said that, “She gave me a look that only a mother could give a child.” I suppose, somewhere in his brain, George Bush somehow really does feel that the Queen of England is, in some sense, his mother and that he is, in some mystical way, a part of the royal family. Or maybe he just wants it to be so. I wonder what Freud would say?

Last night’s debate was the end for John McCain, although he may not yet realize it. His days are over; the people have decided; the voting on November 4th will only be an anticlimax. It is now up to Barack Obama to right the wrongs of the predatory past. Just as the Republicans pushed through tax legislation that crucified the lower and middle class while giving enormous benefits to the wealthy, the Obama administration must dismantle the old tax codes that embraced the myth of “trickle down economics” and replace them with truly fair taxation.

Barack Obama will need to take steps to rapidly reinvigorate our country by establishing a new engine for our economy. This engine must be based upon technology development because the old manufacturing economy has been outsourced to China, and it’s not coming back. Barack Obama needs to follow through with his vision that health care is a “right” for all. This is a right that has been too long neglected by the Republican feudalists. He also needs to have a vision that a high quality, university-level education is also a “right” for all – it is also a need for our country if we are to compete in the global economy.

There is much work to be done. There is much debris left to clean up from the economic collapse due to the corruption and greed of the Republican feudalists. We have an economy that must be put on track again; we have a military that must come home from its foreign expeditions; we need to regain our country’s preeminence in scientific research and education; and we need to once again become a true champion for human rights in the world. It is time for the feudalists to realize that their time is over and to step aside.

As Dylan said long ago, “Your old road is rapidly agin’. Please get out of the new one, if you can’t lend your hand. For the times they are a-changin”.

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